


Ausblenden Embers

by Strangeredlantern



Category: Teen Wolf (TV), The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Holocaust, Hypervigilance, Isolation, M/M, Malnutrition, Self-Harm, Serious Injuries, book burning, kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-06
Updated: 2013-11-06
Packaged: 2017-12-31 16:26:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1033816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Strangeredlantern/pseuds/Strangeredlantern
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In retrospect, it was a terrible idea to leave Stiles alone with a set of silverware.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ausblenden Embers

**Author's Note:**

> Let me warn you now: This is not a happy fic. The moment I saw that day two of Stisaac Week was crossovers, I couldn't help but think of The Book Thief by Marcus Zuzak. If you've read the book then you already know this, but this fic takes place in a small town during the height Nazi Germany. 
> 
>  
> 
> I am in no way Marcus Zuzak, and I in no way claim his characters, his ideas, or his beautiful window into Nazi Germany.
> 
> And with that note, I lead you to where Isaac's story begins, when a concentration camp escapee slips in through his broken basement window.

Isaac watches the book burn because he must, because he can't raise suspicion. He's got enough protection, a party membership, his _Mien Kampf_ tucked into his bag at the top in case someone should ask what he's got it for. But it's not as if people would ask.

Isaac bakes their bread. Isaac has blond hair and blue eyes. Who would think to ask why he needs such a bag at the book burning? How should anyone suspect the boy in his basement?

The flames burn themselves away, taking none of Isaac's fire with them. It's nothing but grey dust and water now, but Isaac knows its heart. In the shadows of last week’s desolation, a small black coat with yellow hair reached into the heart of darkness and pulled out life. A book at the heart. 

Isaac feels bad about watching the little girl, since he didn't hide fast enough, and he knows that she saw him. She looked fierce and terrified, a look that Isaac often sports these days.

They're handing out the large metal shovels now, and Isaac volunteers to help cleanse their streets, the way their culture has been cleansed. Isaac heads straight for the burning heart of the ash, determined to fish life out of it. He bends down in disgusting, disgusted guise, glaring at the grey and red smolder pretending that his shovel is caught in a groove of the asphalt.

It’s not. There it is, black and small and seared,but Isaac’s finger scratches along the side of the pages, Yes they’re still white, the outside burns like Isaac burns, but inside there’s nothing but cold white words. Perfect. It goes in the bag that hit the ground when Isaac did, the mystery of it making the tan fabric lighter than ever before.

Isaac shovels the choking ashes for an hour, just as long as some of the other volunteers, the bag across his chest burning with potential. What’s in that book isn’t for Isaac, it’s for Stiles.

He makes his way back to his shop, just two corners over, his hand resting on the strap in front of him, hand dangerously close to the inside of the bag, close enough to define the mystery. Isaac turns the last corner, the glass of his shop door blank and depthless. He spares a glances to the concrete and brick underneath the shop window, a sheet of wood covering his basement window. 

Why the architect thought a basement window, one in the front of a store none the less, was a good idea, Isaac will never know. He’s eternally thankful. The kids that play soccer on the street had broken it no less than three times, and the final break was enough to convince Isaac to just let it be for a few days, because its not like anyone could fit through the low rectangle. 

Until someone did.

Isaac isn’t in the habit of lying to himself, and as he silently unlocks his shop door for him to slip inside, he bolts it from behind and remembers the first time he heaved open the long forgotten wooden door to the basement. Isaac can’t exactly say that what he found there that night was strictly human. Its been three months and all Isaac can put together is that one, Stiles has a first name that he won’t tell Isaac, two that the tattoo on his arm is clearly unfinished, finally that Stiles never looks like he’s going to stay.

And its unrealistic to think so, Isaac reminds himself as he pulls the door shut over his head, encasing them both in the dankness that holds what’s left of the dwindling grain and other supplies that Isaac hasn’t been able to replenish fully in months.

Stiles really wasn’t in a position to refuse Isaac’s help, and Isaac is glad of it every day, because thinking of the boy in his basement is sometimes much easier than what’s going on upstairs. People haven’t paid him in money for quite some time, but Isaac appreciates what he’s accumulated in return, his favorite so far a song played on the accordion that terrified him. The man he made the trade with had the same fierce terror as the little book thief did. An angry terror of great magnitude. It was like staring into a mirror. How could this man possibly know about Stiles? There’s not a chance in hell. Isaac is careful, there’s no light in the basement at all, and Isaac can only let himself be down there an hour a day. No suspicion has been roused. None.

Isaac lights the lamp that’s kept on the top stair, casting cigarette light over the grey rough walls. And there in the corner is the nest of blankets that centers Isaac, barely moving, barely breathing.

Isaac hates it. Stiles used to wait on the stairs, caution be damned, buzzing to tell Isaac about literally everything. The basement is a vacuum for Isaac, but it somehow filled Stiles, or at least the emptiness called out for Stiles to try and fill it. And he did. With stories and words and people and mysteries and riddles and poems, all for an hour a day until Isaac had to rip himself away, go back to pretending there wasn’t someone trapped in his freezing basement. But you can’t expect someone to be able to fill the silence forever, and that’s when Isaac started bringing the books, because for at least an hour, Isaac could try and fill Stiles up. It worked for a while. The grey of the walls slowly bled into Stiles, eating him away. Some days he was there in vivid color, but more often vivid and violent anger that terrified Isaac the first time, destroyed him the second time.

In retrospect, it was a terrible idea to leave Stiles alone with a set of silverware, since Isaac couldn’t be bothered to wait an extra five minutes for Stiles to finish eating. An hour is an hour. Didn’t understand how bad it was in the freezing cold of the basement in the pitch black with no distraction. Stiles distracted himself by trying to carve the numbers out of his arm with a blunt knife. Horror doesn’t even begin to describe Isaac when Stiles wouldn’t leave the corner of the basement the next day, or the day after, until Isaac finally marched over to pull him out, only to smear his hand in flaked damaged skin.

You can’t force a body to heal, Isaac blankly realises about two weeks after the incident. The blood is gone, the scars are forming, but the damage has been done. Three months without the sun or someone other than Isaac is killing Stiles. And Isaac knows it. He knows it as he kneels beside the nest of grey, pulling back the top one to reveal a skeleton and skin that is not faring much better than the blankets.

“Stiles.”

There’s no response, but Isaac has come to greet that reality the past five days. He curls his fingers over the sharp shoulders and pulls, and Stiles does sit up, but it’s like staring into cracked glass. You can’t see the damage from the sides, but staring straight on is a nightmare. Does Stiles even know he’s there?

“Yeah.”

Apparently. Isaac knows the burning mystery in the bag will never be enough. Stiles needs to get out of here. Isaac does too, because the grey is suffocating them both. Stiles has just been drowning down here much longer.

Its lucky that heavy black curtains have become the fashion, so when Isaac tells Stiles they’re leaving this place, he can mean it with all of his soul. He’s tempted to carry Stiles out of there, but Stiles has no intention of letting him do so, and Isaac just wraps his ice fingers over his own forearms and stands, guiding Stiles up.

No one can see them, Isaac chants to himself. No one. Not when Isaac slams the door open, not when Stiles hunches against the space, not when they walk up the back stairs behind the store and up to Isaac’s room.

“What’s in the bag?” Stiles asks the steps in front of them, but Isaac’s heart is leaping too fast to answer right away. He’s more concerned that Stiles is about to fall up or down the stairs, and they’re only half way. Stiles refused Isaac’s offer to stand next to him on the stairs, so Isaac has both hands on the hall of the stairs two steps behind. He manages to smile anyways, because he lives to satisfy Stiles’ curiosity.

“Burning mystery. Move faster and you’ll get to see.” Even in the midst of all this, Isaac can’t help but talk to Stiles the way he’s been accustomed to. Maybe that makes things a little better, because Stiles laughs as they hit the top of the stairs, awfully familiar to the first time Isaac heard it. 

There’s no preamble to Isaac’s room, considering it’s as small as the bakery beneath it, and the stairs lead directly into it. And in a rush of color that Isaac wishes he could replay over and over, Stiles runs to the bed and jumps on it, flopping on his back and sighing. “I knew you were keeping the best for yourself.” He says it with a smile, but it doesn’t make Isaac feel any less horrendous.

Isaac fishes into the bag still around his torso and pulls out the book, tossing it from the head of the stairs over to the bed, the small charred square landing on Stiles hip. He huffs in surprised indignation until he picks it up, cracking the spine almost in half in urgency to read the book. Isaac moves to take off the bag, freezing with it half over his head when he notices something is wrong.

“It’s too dark. I can’t read this.” Isaac flicks to the black curtain covering the wide window that faces the front of the street, and he drops the bag to step over it, coming to a stop in front of the heavy velvet. Stiles is leaning up from the bed, doing his best to look nonchalant and totally failing. “You think we can open them?”

Isaac knows in his heart that its going to be the worst decision he’s ever made, but he makes it because Stiles needs it, even if the sky is tea yellow from the ashes and fog of the dying books. Isaac turns away from the curtains a bit, shrugging his shoulder because he’s always been a terrible liar, especially with Stiles. He holds a hand out anyways, inviting Stiles to come stand in front of the window.

When Stiles joins him, Isaac ends up crushing Stiles’ hand, his unoccupied one pushing away the black to reveal a sickening picture, at least to Isaac. Not so for Stiles apparently, and Isaac glances down to see a face he hasn’t seen in a long time. Even though the sky is filled with frozen disaster and the windows across the street, all over in fact, are as equally blocked out, Stiles loves it.

Isaac can’t say how long they stay there, until he feels a hard thump against his chest. Stiles is holding the book there, his fingers flat over it, trying to force it into Isaac. “We going to read this or what?”

They sit on the bed together, and stare at the windows across from theirs, Isaac holding the book open on his lap. Stiles is curling into him, and it feels like the motion has been three months in coming. Stiles still doesn’t look like he has any intention of staying, but tears on Isaac’s part will have to be saved for later. Isaac reads for a little, but the book is abandoned between them in favor of Isaac curling back into Stiles. Isaac thinks that the kiss has been there for months, even if this is the only time they’ll tell each other it’s actually there.

 

Across the street, yellow hair and a black coat is once again obscured by a heavy black curtain. Liesel thinks that her papa was right, that the baker certainly was up to something. She never would have guessed that he also had a prize in his basement. Her fingers release the edge of the curtain, turning to face her own laying in the bed upstairs, and Liesel wishes she would have been brave enough to open the curtains all the way like he had.

**Author's Note:**

> It is my deepest hope that I have not offended anyone, especially fans of The Book Thief. I love that book like I love cloudy days, and I hope I have done it justice. If you've made it to the end, thank you for reading.


End file.
